Balance: Ancient Truth
by SkyeSoul
Summary: Voldemort's back, and nobody knows why he even lived in the first place. An ancient prophecy, older than muggle civilization, has the key to destroying him. But will they find it, or will Voldemort's immortality remain true? Rated T for action/battle.


**New Series! Yay. As the summary said, not Horcruxes. Too predictable. :)**

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_Africa, in the Valley of Kings, 2500 B.C._

He was the greatest wizard on the earth, not that there were many in the year 2500 B.C. He was in a half-circle room with a long party table, him at the head, and two other party tables filled with all the witches and wizards in the world he knew of at that time.

He sat on a royal throne with six orbs around the great edge of the room. One, white golden and letting off a soft glow, to his right. One, black-purple and letting off a hard-edged pulse, to his left. Spanning along the curved wall were a red, burning orb, a blue, liquid-feeling cold orb, a white orb generating a wind around it and an immensely heavy brown orb.

You could feel each one bending the world around it to focus on it, and the eyes of the occupants of the room's eyes were always on them, except for when the sorcerer king demanded otherwise.

This king was leading a magical war. He believed wizards should rule over the 'muggles', a new term coined by one of his most faithful servants. It meant boring or unimaginative, and indeed, the muggles were muggle in that definition.

He was close to eradicating all of the muggles and had gathered all of the wizards into his castle for a celebration over their dominance. The king liked parties, and figured to celebrate _right now_ because he simply couldn't wait.

But there still existed a pocket of resistance in the wizard population, who believed all beings were equal. They were mainly druids, and because they did long ritual-magic, weren't very capable in blocking assaults, so he did nothing. One, though, was the first one he tried to kill after the ritual. He was left with a curious lightning-bolt scar in the middle of his forehead where he had aimed one of his sorcerer's new spells, _Avada Kedavra_. This spell, tested on animals and slaves many times, killed instantly, and he was very happy with it. However, it failed on this random blond druid, and every other time he tried to kill this blond man he always failed.

He also had a mental connection not unlike the mind-reading of seers, but it was weak after only existing for a year. Only in his own towering tempers would the blond boy feel pain in his scar, and only a little bit, he knew. So he brushed it off as a freak accident.

But he was a druid too, the scarred druid, so he also wasn't too concerned. And he got on with his party, drinking merrily and quickly becoming drunk.

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"Thamelus, when are we to start the ritual?" a man asked.

Thamelus, a tall, slightly tanned man with average brown eyes and blond hair pulled back in the average ponytail of the day, replied, "As the sun sets, Cherlon. As the sun sets."

And as the short, brown-haired woman scurried away to tell the rest of those participating in the ritual, he checked everyone's defensive charms. They were right outside the royal castle, arranged in a hexagon to counteract the Balance Orbs and their connection to the King.

According to legend, Thamelus, leader of the druids, had to be at the head of the Heptagon and leading the ritual, for the prophecy dictated he was the only one with the power to kill the tyrannical king. The other six people were powerful druids with the same affinity as the orbs.

This was the culmination of years of both specialized and general training since the day a year ago when he got the strange mental connection. He felt whenever the king was in a towering temper by a twinge in his scar. He knew not what would happen to this connection when the King's life snuffed out, but he'd sacrifice himself to save the lives of many.

A sandy-haired man, Tavanar, came up and said, "We are ready."

At that moment, the bottom of the blood-red sun touched the horizon.

"Begin," Thalmeus said, and everyone started chanting: _"Per oraculum vox Thalmeus discerpo rex rgis Ithilinor iunctio ut orbis terrarum quod is pondera orbis."_

Thalmeus, however, chanted, _"In Ithilinor mens ego eo ut discerpo iunctio ut terra quod pondera orbis restituto pondera ut veneficus quod pacis ut vita."_

The chalked lines on the grass glowed a blinding white and then colors began flowing through it as they continued chanting for 10 minutes before enough power amassed for something to happen.

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King Ithilinor sat, inebriated more so than any of the guests, upon his throne, feeling his success. And what made it even sweeter, is that if he were to fail now the castle would come crashing down and kill everyone, therefore nobody would know of his failure! His plan was perfect.

At that moment he fell unconscious as a battering ram hit his mind, but nobody thought anything of it, thinking he passed out from his drunken stupor.

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Thamelus had stopped chanting and closed his eyes, as had everyone else. His face twitched, as he seemed to be fighting a great battle in his mind.

"Do not move! He needs to be able to draw on our power, as severing links like them require more energy than one person has," Tavanar called out as Thamelus's second-in-command.

The connections in the Hexagon flared up considerably and vanished as the six druids slumped in their positions, nearly unconscious with the energy drain. Thamelus collapsed, unconscious as well and on the edge of life and death.

As everyone rushed to Thamelus, the huge castle shook. An explosion was heard from the inside and the towering castle collapsed in on itself.

The druids stopped and stood, watching as if in slow motion the castle deflated like a hot-air balloon. They mourned the lives lost, even if they were misguided, for nobody deserves to die without a chance to repent.

After the healers tended to Thamelus, they came back and gave the worst news of all.

"We've done all we can, but it looks like he's going to die. He just lost too much energy," The lead healer said, known for her businesslike tone in any situation. And true to that tears were spilling out of her eyes as she said this in a steady voice.

Thamelus died that night, and the next day Tavanar, the new leader, held a meeting.

"We must hide the orbs and destroy all record of this event. We cannot allow anyone to meet Thamelus's fate again," Tavanar said.

Everyone agreed, and each powerful druid in the ritual took their respective orb and hid it away where nobody would find them. The rest of the druids took hammers to any stone tablets even with the word 'balance' on them and destroyed them.

One druid, druid of the darkness, kept one tablet that said why one would bond to the orbs and the location of the castle, knowing that there had to be information on it inside. He hoped somebody would find the tablet and use the power to restore ultimate peace to the world.

In the castle remained one small tablet with how to perform the bonding ritual, that the late King Ithilinor used in the first place, cracked in half and already crumbling away in the wreckage.

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Thousands of years passed and as the earth itself changed, the castle wreckage was buried, and then eroded to the surface again. Then a mountain grew over it and it was encased in one of the deepest caves to mankind, under what is now Portugal.

The tablet with the last vestiges of information was long forgotten in the dust within the castle and the druid of darkness traveled to Ireland and changed his identity after being estranged from the druid circle.

He was forgotten as a hermit, but because of his ritual skills his house remained untouched by time until this day. He had one daughter, Cliodna, and with her his line died out.

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**Thanks to Blackened-Downpour for being a fabulaous beta. :) ^sings High School Musical even though SkyeSoul hates it.^**

**Next chapter is our favorite Harry Potter's summer life. :) **


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